Dick and Rick Hoyt: The picture of inspiration

Michael Morton/Daily News staff

Monday

Jan 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2012 at 8:51 PM

Even after taking 1,000 photos of his latest subjects and watching them pose on and off for 22 hours, the artist savors intimate moments like these: the older man’s determined finish-line stare softened, the son beaming as his father’s hand rests on his shoulder.

Even after taking 1,000 photos of his latest subjects and watching them pose on and off for 22 hours, the artist savors intimate moments like these: the older man’s determined finish-line stare softened, the son beaming as his father’s hand rests on his shoulder.

Hopkinton artist Dustin Neece could simply focus on the mind-bending athletic feats of the racing duo Dick and Rick Hoyt. But he wants to push beyond their status as international icons and tap what he regards as their true inspirational appeal.

“Who they are as people and their connection,” Neece said during a recent session at Rick’s apartment complex in Sturbridge, a short ride from Dick Hoyt’s Holland home. “The emotion between them. For me that’s the focal point.”

The Hoyts’ story is well-known by now but bears repeating: Rick Hoyt is a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy since birth, when the oxygen to his brain was cut off. Fifteen years later, Rick asked Dick to push him in a wheelchair for a five-mile charity race.

The pair has crossed the U.S. and completed 1,072 races to date. That includes six Ironman triathlons where Dick swam 2.4 miles while pulling 130-pound Rick in an inflatable boat, biked 112 miles while Rick sat in a special seat in front of him and ran 26.2 miles — a marathon — while pushing Rick in a wheelchair.

Finally, Team Hoyt formed a foundation to inspire and support young people with disabilities.

“You can see we’ve come a long way and broken down a lot of barriers along the way,” Dick said.

Dick has always called the Boston Marathon his favorite race, with Team Hoyt clocking in at under three hours several times. The duo is set to hit the Hopkinton starting line for the 30th time on Patriots Day, April 16.

They’ve long had a relationship with the disability advocacy group Easter Seals Massachusetts, and CEO Kirk Joslin wanted his nonprofit to do something to commemorate the pair’s marathon mark. Local contacts directed him toward Neece, commissioning the 2002 Hopkinton High School graduate to create an oil painting that will be copied for 300 lithographs in a fundraiser for the Easter Seals and The Hoyt Foundation.

In particular, Neece’s extensive efforts to interview Hopkinton Iwo Jima veterans and research that battle for a previous commission impressed the Easter Seals head.

“I just like the way he approached it,” Joslin said. “We thought he could do justice to the Hoyts’ story.”

While the Hoyts are embraced by marathon organizers, the Boston Athletic Association, as ambassadors of the race, it wasn’t always so. The team ran their first two races as numberless “bandits” because the association determined that they didn’t fall neatly into either the wheelchair or able-bodied categories. When their request was eventually granted, they had to use a qualifying race to meet the able-bodied time not for Dick’s age category, but for Rick’s faster one.

“When we first started, nobody wanted anything to do with us,” Dick said, though the BAA later made the bandit runs official. “Our message is, ‘Yes you can.’”

Now, Neece is trying to capture all that history and emotion, meticulously dabbing paint onto a 3-by-4-foot canvas while Dick marvels at the artist’s patience and skill and Neece constantly learns new tidbits about Team Hoyt’s accomplishments.

“It’s like one thing after another,” Neece said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Some of the modeling sessions have taken three hours, and at one point Neece had Dick outside in his running clothes on a frigid day, while Rick peeked through his apartment windows and laughed at his father.

“I usually can’t do this,” Dick said. “I have to be moving all the time.”

But Dick is 71 now, and realizes it’s not the finish line clocks that are running slower. While Dick still tours the country as a motivational speaker, Team Hoyt has cut its annual race tally down to 15 to 20 from 50. Dick has stents to keep arteries open, and last year he completed the marathon despite a torn meniscus and hamstring — pushing ahead so that their 30th Marathon matched up with Rick turning 50 and other milestones.

Running has been good for Dick’s hereditary cholesterol levels, and therapy seems to be helping his injuries. A new race wheelchair, meanwhile, seems likely to relieve Rick of the pain he feels from the three rods in his back. But questions remain about how long their partnership can go on.

“Rick might wake up and say, ‘Dad, I’m done,’ but I doubt it,” Dick said. “Or I might get injured. But right now there’s no end in sight.”

While other athletes might step up and partner with Rick for individual races, it was with his father that he first flapped his arms in joy during events and communicated on his special computer that the time spent on courses momentarily made him feel like he wasn’t handicapped. There are also the letters and emails that keep pouring in from people around the globe who have drawn inspiration from the Hoyts, and the like-minded racing chapters that keep popping up across the nation. And, finally, there’s the lure of just one more finish line.

While Team Hoyt no longer competes in Ironmans, Dick is pondering one more run across the country, albeit at a less madcap pace than the last time.

“We don’t know if it’s going to happen” he said, before pointing to his head. “But it’s up there.”

(Michael Morton can be reached at 508-626-4338 or mmorton@wickedlocal.com.)

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